Lots of Paper is Required to go Paperless

When you are going paperless in your hospital, do not underestimate the amount of time it takes to digitise reference data, lists, protocols, pathways, images, order sets etc. This is just one pile of books I came across to support the complex and lengthy discussions between our IT analysts and front line users.

It is not all about choosing and implementing an Electronic Patient Record product, it is more about making it work for your clinicians through detailed configuration. Sure, some vendors will have some information hard wired into their product and some will provide "out the box" configs, but you need to realise that to do this well in a hospital, or across multiple specialties, the effort can dwarf the equivalent product costs. Your hospital is not "out the box".